Fall Semester 2010 Life Drawing Overview

I felt like this post should be in red. Some kind of festive bold color to celebrate the progress of me, and my fellow student artists & designers this semester in LD I.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/juliaguettler/

Here the link to my flickr in which my work has been organized into four basic catagories of the semester Manekin, Gesture Drawings, Long Drawings & Shell Drawing Homework.

The semester has been an extremely productive one, and I walked into this class not having taken a drawing class since Drawing II my sophomore year of college. Figurative drawing is worlds away, and in my opinion way more helpful in figuring out the rendering of form. One of the things I feel like I was most successful at working on this semester was taking a step back from my tendency to generalize things and really LOOK at people, at hands, at feet-at things I didn't take the time to pour my drawing soul into before. Something as simple and beautiful as a Tortoise shell is something I would have completely overlooked before, but now I see the intricate details that are worth recording on paper. I feel very empowered by the anatomy lessons I learned this semester. Building Allen up from nothing has been something that has been tricky for me, but something I really had to take the time to master. I had to sit down and look over images of muscles-of the human anatomy, and I feel really proud of how far I came from not knowing what the hell to do with the clay on the manekin.

The gesture drawings were something else I felt empowered on. I really had no clue what I was doing there at first. With classical long drawing poses, I felt like it was a language I inheritly understood. The gesture drawings were something else entirely. After awhile though I could see the sacrem, I could see the lungs, I could see the tibia steading the leg, and the knee caps flexing. This was a new language I had to learn. The gesture drawings I uploaded look so simple, yet they are so intricate in the fact that you have to know the placement of the organs in the body to understand, to truly be able to draw gesture drawings.

Anyways, here are some images of how Allen turned out- as well as my final shell drawing in which I wasn't as happy as the second, but I tried to really grasp the texture of the shell-I'm going to be sad to see this go...I can't wait to take LD II!

Quiet Weekend Update

I am
sitting in my living room assessing what left I have to do, and what I have gotten done so far. All while watching Titanic. One of my favorite movies I have to say. It's everyone's secret favorite. Yesterday was a really busy day in Applied Arts, the senior design shows were happening and they were really wonderful!! The faculty show was going on as well as the Life Drawing II show. First I have to comment, the life drawing II show was amazing. The accuracy of their skeletons was something straight out of an anatomy book. I was very very impressed. The Faculty show was as always really enjoyable, I love being able to see our professors own work after knowing them in class. So here's some of what I put together for our sculpture show.

the text used is from contemporary female pop music. I guess I decided to do this and use this as a means of a language because it went with my theme of exploring the celebrity all semester. My intentions are to get the viewer to start connecting the photographs, the lyrics and thinking about the way pop culture seeps into our every day life. I aesthetically really liked the visual product of this. The series was projected onto the back wall of my space. So that was last night. A lot of appetizers for dinner. I'm generally exhausted today. I have done a lot of going back and forth. On thursday night I was back in Minneapolis, and I am so excited to be back in the cities.

I have been thinking a lot about what I have learned this semester. And that will be discussed in my final portfolio! Missy and I turned in our art history project. That is another thing that I was pleased with the results. Just crossing things off my list. Not my Christmas list. Not yet...haven't done any shopping. oops. 1 week till christmas.

Creative Process

I am currently sitting in my studio, thinking a lot about what I want to create and show on Friday for the Advanced Sculpture show. I thought I would work out a lot of what I am thinking in the form of my blog. So you guys, thanks for listening to my ramblings. Small talk wise-it's f**king cold out! oh my gosh. Did I move to Hoth? I don't remember things being this bad last year, but obviously after 22 years in the midwest I have really selective memory. Speaking of memory, that is something I have been trying to dig up what to convey about this subject matter. My fears: I feel like every young artist tries to deal with this subject matter at some time, and I myself have delved into the subject matter coming up with only bits and pieces.

An artist I have been looking at a lot is Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. I'm looking over art now and they describe foerester as someone who "tests various vocabularies of the imagination and memory." That is something that really intrigues me. The idea of crawling into people's memories, and more importantly i guess their imaginations.

"I want to transform the viewer into a detective, generate a seeking spirit for a research for a curiosity for other stories unless it is one's own: to stress the importance of all kinds of narratives as self-languages, and the values of clues or vocabularies."- this is a quote from Ms.Foerester, and I completely understand and hope to emulate such a reaction in a viewer someday.

I have been experimenting with this kind of language, thinking about would reach the viewer, produce a strong narrative that the viewer can use their imagination to fill in the blank, maybe that blank will be nostolgia, or whimsy--

if you want to see the result of my ramblings please come to the advanced sculpture "We Hate it When Our Friends Become Successful." show Friday at 7pm in room 120.

Thinking about the beach...in a snow storm

Here is my shell drawing: I hope everyone survived the blizzard this weekend. I have spent a lot of time over the weekend working on building the muscles in my mannequin. I am almost done! So many little intricate muscles....

Tuesday. Frozen Tundra, Hands Hands Hands

A tuesday blogpost...coming to you live from the life drawing room. Today in class we critiqued our shells. I will post my shell drawing w/india ink-we have one more to complete but I am quite pleased by it. I was very impressed with Alisha's and Annie's as well as well as Matt's! I took good notes for improving my next shell drawing and I am rather excited. Annie used this amazing remedy of teas, and the brillance of the color of the tea was something that surprised me quite a bit. I like to be surprised. Today was a very relaxed day in class. Amy gave a brief lecture on hands, and we drew each others. I worked on Alisha's hands for awhile. I am going to try to do a few other studies as hands are something I feel my figurative work is weak on.

So...it's approaching. The end of the semester. I cannot believe it. My mannequin muscles are something I should update you all on--here's how it's going: not so hot. I will be updating on Thursday for a special edition post on the muscles. STAY TUNED (and oh so excited.) Allen needs to look really good for finals.

In Baroque Art, I am collaborating with my fellow artist Missy Hoch in recreating some famous paintings and works of art in Baroque art, and putting a contemporary spin on them. Here I am as the girl with the pearl earring by Vermeer:
I am pleased with it. I will also post some photographs of Missy as Artemesia Gentileschi. I think this portrait turned out as we wanted it to. It captures the feeling of the original painting, but with a contemporary feeling. What do you guys think? Does it translate?
I also am hard at work sorting out my work I am doing for the advanced Sculpture show "We Hate it When Our Friends Become Successful." It will be on December 17th, and will also provide any students who are thinking about signing up for sculpture II next semester (you should!) the opportunity to check out our new studio space. So mark that on your calenders as well. It's the same night as the senior shows so I think we will all be able to wander around check out some awesome work, and pat ourselves on the back for making it through another semester.

I will be posting more this week. If you have read this I applaud you!

Yves Klein & Turtles

So i feel this blog post is most appropriate if written in the CLOSEST (yves klein would cry) color to YK bleu available on blogger. I am sitting in my studio kind of thinking about what the next 14 days will be like. Hectic. Let's go back to last Tuesday, rewind. On Tuesday we had our semester field trip for Life Drawing to the Walker & then for nice drawing session at the Bell Museum. The Walker is always a pleasure for a contemporary art geek like me. The main exhibit was "With the Void Full Powers" by french neo-dada artist Yves Klein. I have seen his work many times in textbooks and on the Internet, but there was something so incredibly beautiful about seeing his Yves Klein Blue in person. It was breathtaking. And I know a lot of people would be skeptical of such a thing. "Just blue on a canvas? I could do that." Ah yes, but you didn't. As soon as even the most skeptical person of contemporary art sees the blue, I am sure they would find themselves mesmerized. Aside from just the blue on canvas, his most famous work, the imprints of women's bodies rolled across the canvas in his yves klein blue was fascinating to see in person. My roommate actually had done something similar for Sculpture I last semester in which I had to lay naked in covered in Vaseline and press myself up against plexiglass leaving an imprint. The shape made was the same, the beautiful butterfly silhouette. It was interesting ti view this piece after being part of that. Alisha and I were captivated and surprised by Klein's fire work. Gorgeous. It evoked feelings of passion, but subtlety. There was also a really impactful show by Alec Soth called From Here to There-- Alec Soth's America, showcasing photographs of the ever surprising, sometimes scary--contemporary American landscape.


We ventured over to the Bell Museum, which I didn't quite know what to expect. Taxidermy kind of freaks me out a lot, I have also been hearing whisperings of the Museum closing due to lack of funding. After visiting I surely hope this is not the case. Although my opinions of taxidermy did not change, their bone collection was impressive to say the least. I ended up in the "bone room" while Alisha drew a whale pelvis, Annie found a bea utiful horse-show crab (dead) to draw. The tortoises (living) immediately caught my eye. I will post soon, the drawing I drew of my beloved Turtle. I also touched a snake, something I really would have never done had someone not been holding it and acting like it was pretty tame. Overall it was a really good experience. I will be posting a series of my tortoise drawings later in the day. I became very fond of him.

Inside My Studio & Other Mullings

For the past week I have been working on a few things in the sculpture studio quite readily. The photograph to the left is the product of a lot of my research culminating into a piece. Titled "All That Glitters..." I dove into investigating the fragility of human life, our obsession with the celebrity and the transformation of the individual. The phrase "All That Glitters Is Not Gold" has been around for centuries, William Shakesphere actually coined the term himself for his play The Twelfth Night. The only exception was that Shakesphere used the word "glistens" instead of glitters. (Glitter was not a word in old english)This interested me greatly as this phase has been around for hundreds of years, yet there is something in our human nature that does not heed the advice. I took essentially an old frame (a frame by the way would not have been my first choice, as I do find them literal and I can see people's problem with the usage of them) Anyways, I took this frame that at one point was something precious. Did it hold artwork? A portrait? Someone's family photo? It's detoriated value had made it found its way to me, where I turned the old frame into else by covering it up with the morose black glitter. An exercise I think speaks volumes of how we act in our society when it comes to aging, commercialism, etc.

I think it is a good starting point for where I am headed with my work. Here is a look inside my studio right now. As you can see you, a little peak at what is inspiring me and the direction of my work! As for life drawing I am particularly excited for our field trip tomorrow, there is a Yves Kline show at the Walker I have been looking forward to seeing. I cannot wait to blog about it since I am a complete and total art history nerd. We started experimenting with india ink wash with our shells and I am so excited to start the project. I really enjoyed how it turned out, and really feel like the medium is going to showcase the shell quite nicely. Below is one of my first drafts of it, my shell has a lot of pinks and oranges in it and I think I am going to experiment with blackberry tea tones, I saw some of the examples in the student work and I was smitten instantly!

Feet, Chicago, Whirlwind...

So I will be blogging more! I hope you all can keep up with me. This past week has been crazy (I was in Chicago this past weekend in in St. Paul the next moving my boyfriend into his new apartment in the middle of a blizzard), and I am very frustrated with the snow… which has been kind of ruining my life and all of my plans right now but whatever. Onwards to life drawing, tonight I am going to be re-doing my thighs—recently Alisha and I acquired access to Visual Body, which is fascinating to me, and very helpful. Seeing the actual muscles from a non-Zoologik point of view (sorry zoologik, but your books confuse me—and I would like if they were in color, thanks love Julia.) What kind of fascinates me the most about this process is that we as artists are on the same website as students in med school, studying the same anatomy. I wish Visual Body was open to everyone, because honestly, it is an amazing website. My thighs though I did through visual body, which confused me a little because I was working alone and not with Alisha and Annie (as we usually do with our mannekins) Alisha will have to help me tonight, redo some of my thighs, and then it’s onwards to the legs. A small source of irritation (seems like this blog post is fairly negative, apologies to whoever reads this I am just ranting) there is no more clay left of my color in the life drawing room. I am a nitpicky person and really want to make Allen (my mannequin) look as real as possible. I don’t want him suddenly to have blue legs! Penco does not have any oil based clay, so I will have to find some SOMEWHERE in the art building. There’s rumors there’s some to spare in the ceramics lab.

Our lecture this past week was all to do with feet. I will be uploading some pictures up of K’s feet that we spent about an hour drawing. I have never ever given that much thought to feet before, as they are often forgotten in the human form I feel like, as well has hands, but they as essential to getting the figure to look remotely accurate. The bone structure of the feet was really fascinating. In my spare time, I google imaged some pictures of the foot structure. I have never thought in detail how intricate the bone work is within the foot. I have been interested in reflexology as a pseudoscience for awhile so this lecture paired nicely with my interest. Here are some lovely drawings of K’s feet as well as some charts from the internet incase anyone is interested like I am. (probably not, but there’s bound to be some freaks out there like me.)

Mid Semester Review

My Flickr Account, a link to my life drawing work

I can't even begin to describe how much I have learned in life drawing this semester about the human form but I will try. I knew this class would benefit me ever since Amy came into my Painting I class to do a short lecture about the skull, since we were working on portraiture. In that short time I remember realizing I had learned more about the human form, and thought more about it than perhaps I ever had. Figure drawing and painting has always been my favorite. Being able to capture flesh, movement, bone structure and having it translate is something I have always aspired to grasp. As the semester has progressed, I have chizzled away at the perceptions I had of human forms-which were merely outline drawing-and replaced those perceptions with solid evidence of what is there. I have replaced the outline with lungs, with a bone structure, with a pelvis & sacrem.

This element of science and partnering if with the live drawing aspect has helped me look at the human figure with a whole new set of eyes. Of course, I have had problems that I have been trying to correct. My first problem as I stated above was viewing the human body as an outline, drawing lightly I realized was incredibly important for translating that outline into 3D drawing. Something I still need to tackle is my contour line drawing, as it was something i worked incredibly hard on but felt it was something I was not happy with. I know in my next drawing I need to limit my lines, go in one direction, draw on an axis, and just like with the human form-LEARN TO SEE IT FROM a 3D PERSPECTIVE-not an outline!

Groping at the Human Form..

Looking at this photo you can clearly see i spent the most time trying to grasp the torso, as the feet are laughably disproportionate. I am taking the soreness in my arm as a sign that things are going well and that I am drawing as I should in class, trying really hard to grasp the gestures and put the gestures into the work. These two drawings are ones that we worked on in class for approx. 30 minutes. The one on the right is my most recent long sitting drawing, as I unfortunately had to miss class on Thursday. It will be hard for me to start drawing again tomorrow but I am excited to get back into it. Last week we also had our first large assignment (I will upload the pictures on here!) I was disappointed with my work, although I put a lot of time into it (7+ hours!) I felt was way too busy and the contours weren't going the right way. I need to train my eyes to do it, and I am glad I have three more chances to be able to get it right. I was really really frustrated with the contour drawing last week so I am glad I got a week to break from it. Onwards...

Inspiration

The Ribcage

I have never thought about a ribcage being round. We started investigating the middle section of a person, in my eyes I have always seen people as having this flat torso as a middle. These perceptions were quickly replaced as Amy lectured about the oval egg shape of the ribcage. I started googling pictures as well as (once again) feeling my own ribcage wondering what is going on in there. I was really pleased as we started drawing to find out that K has a wonderful ribcage to study. After a series of gesture drawings (and REALLY trying to get at drawing the figure using my arm and not my hand) we settled into a half an hour session of focusing on the torso of the model. I have always been visual, but staring at human flesh I realize how much it helps translate into the picture, knowing where the bones are- and seeing it in real life.

Here is a quick drawing of a human skeleton ribcage and then the ribcage as it is now in my head, instead of a square.

September 29, 2010

There is a lot for me to process, and my mind is being opened up to the wonders of anatomy. Amy said something that really resided with me, she told our class that it's not just doctors that get to be empowered, but we do too-because we can learn how our bodies work. It sounds simple, but in reality most people don't understand how their own bodies function, it just is, and it IS empowering to understand what is going on. We have begun working on our mannequins and although I need a lot of work understanding anatomy, I am very interested and willing to commit. I find myself feeling for the bones in my body or muscles while at work, I'm sure people are like what on earth is that girl doing...

We have also begun working with a live model, which is honestly the most fun I have ever had as an art student in drawing class. The human form has always been my favorite subject, whether it's painting or contemporary work-I feel most connected when working with the human form.

Here are a few short gesture drawings I worked on in class, we were given very little time and this is just the start...

This other drawing I started working on for a longer period of time with the model.

These will hopefully improve with time.

September 21, 2010

• Art has always been something that I just knew I loved. Just like when you're little and you know you love playing outside--it's kind of that simple. When I came to college I had applied to a couple of schools with the intention of majoring in art there, but decided to major in Apparel Design at Stout. I quickly realized although fashion is something I will always love, designing wasn't what I wanted to do. It felt like I was cutting out something important, and I was. I declared my major in Studio-Art (and kept some credit for my fashion design classes by working towards a business retail minor.) One of the things that I have found most captivating is studying other artists, and I enjoy a wide variety of art history-anything from Baroque to Contemporary. It would be incredibly hard to pick which course within the art program has been my favorite, Art Since 1950 has been one of the most inspiring-along with Sculpture I-which led to my interest in contemporary art. I am taking Life Drawing to get a better grasp on the human body, and to learn skills that will better my practice in art. I think I will learn more than I even realize in this class. Being able to visually see the structure of the inside of the human body, and study it inside and out will help me immensely.